I got clobbered in competition again. Fourth out of a field of five. Granted, I did have the nerves, but I think I acquitted myself well. The woman who took first is much as I was two and a half years ago: a skilled (if lapsed) violinist taking up Scottish fiddling after a long vacation from the instrument, playing a pretty basic repertoire.

After some frustration and soul-searching, I realized what was going on. My first year in competition was a bit of a fluke. I came in competing with the easiest tunes in the basic repertoire, because that's all I knew. There was a big buffer between the difficulty level of these tunes and my "best day" playing ability. Since then, my skills and repertoire have greatly expanded, and I've chosen tunes much closer to the edge of my "best day" ability, eliminating the buffer that allowed me to have nerves and a little mistake or two and still do very well. And I've been picking hard tunes mainly to show off to the other fiddlers. And they're duly impressed. I get great accolades from my fellow, but it doesn't translate into placing in the standings. Because a good judge judges on how you played, not factoring into account how hard the tune is. It's all about the performance you gave then and there.

Recognizing this, I have a three-pronged strategy to succeed in competition again:
1) Don't compete for a while. Every time I go through this, I give myself a complex over it. I get all wound up and nervous and stressed, and that hurts my performance. I need time to let those stresses dissipate.
2) Pick tunes to win, not to impress. I need to go back to the basic repertoire. Maybe work on variations if I need to spice it up a bit. Play in the "easy" keys for a while. I have other opportunities to show off the tough tunes.
3) What separates me from most competitive fiddlers (aside from newcomers riding the wave I've fallen off of) is that compared to them, I have very little - almost no - public performance experience. Public performance stresses are different from competition stresses, but having much more experience in the former can't help but improve one's poise in the latter. And this is the area I'm working on the hardest.

So it wasn't all bad. I really learned something about my playing.

The pipe band competed too; and took 3rd out of 5 bands. The judging was pretty scatter-shot. Maybe the judges didn't know what they were talking about - but more likely, they were listening for different things, and standing at different places around our circle. Listening to a recording of our performance, executionally, and with regard to drone tuning, we clobbered the winning band. Where we lost out was in the tuning and tone of our chanters - part of that are our reeds, and part of that is the playing schedule of some of our bandsmen. But if we can get those chanters sounding better, we will be glorious.